These were my very first attempts at visualizing data beyond the bar charts. Inspired by Giorgia Lupi and Stephanie Posavec's Dear Data postcards, these visualizations represent a weekly theme and data recorded on myself. These were created in Summer 2019.
When Van challenged me to visualize what I drank this week, I was curious about how I would orient and reorient to the data I was collecting on myself. For instance, this summer I’ve really been trying to be mindful of how much I’m spending on beverages (chai tea lattes are my weakness), my use of single-use plastics, and how much water I’m drinking. Knowing that I was recording data and sharing it publicly, did that make me “behave better?”
To be honest, I don’t think my actions were impacted by this particular project. For instance, there was never a point where I considered buying a chai tea latte and didn’t because of this project. However, I’d be curious to see the performativity of my actions when recording data on something that hasn’t had an internalized pattern, on something that I desperately need to improve on (procrastination, responding to messages, etc.)
For this week’s visualization, I was inspired by the hours of a clock. I recorded the time my drink was consumed, what it was consumed in, how much was consumed, and what I drank. Feedback always welcome :)
I couldn’t wait to grow up. I imagined adulthood as crossing this magical threshold where suddenly my life would be figured out. But, the older I got and the more I was expected to specialize in something, the more unattainable this threshold of growing up seemed and the more I was okay with that.
In my first week of this project, I made a quick visualization of what I wanted to be when I grew up. Originally, I intended on doing a dendrochronology visualization (tree ring) for each year of my life but it was far too cluttered. I decided to use a different part of the tree, the branches, to represent my aspirations. Each branch visualizes the aspiration, its time period and influence, how certain I was that I would be that, and the data source.
From ski lift attendant to blackjack dealer to video game developer, it certainly seems that my aspirations change with the wind. But, I argue that being open to these influences allows me to me to connect different dots, make new dots, and ask more questions. An interesting trend emerges. The older I got, the more uncertainty I had/have and the more I realized I did not know. As someone who can’t watch a movie before reading the Wikipedia plot, it is frightening to not yet have it all figured out, especially as I approach junior year. But, I’m starting to be comfortable with the ambiguity and more confident in my ability to resist the rat race.
In my first week of this project, I made a quick visualization of what I wanted to be when I grew up. Originally, I intended on doing a dendrochronology visualization (tree ring) for each year of my life but it was far too cluttered. I decided to use a different part of the tree, the branches, to represent my aspirations. Each branch visualizes the aspiration, its time period and influence, how certain I was that I would be that, and the data source.
From ski lift attendant to blackjack dealer to video game developer, it certainly seems that my aspirations change with the wind. But, I argue that being open to these influences allows me to me to connect different dots, make new dots, and ask more questions. An interesting trend emerges. The older I got, the more uncertainty I had/have and the more I realized I did not know. As someone who can’t watch a movie before reading the Wikipedia plot, it is frightening to not yet have it all figured out, especially as I approach junior year. But, I’m starting to be comfortable with the ambiguity and more confident in my ability to resist the rat race.
For this week’s visualization, I wanted to challenge myself to not do something linear or radial or flowery. The difficulty of this task indicates how much I rely on these styles of visualization and so I searched desperately for inspiration around me. And there was nothing more omnipresent than the city skyline…everywhere I walked and every window I looked out of. Thus, I created a building for each day. The height of the building was the number of hours I slept and the width was the number of hours I exercised (defined as attending a group fitness class or gymming). Because I was lazy, I only measured my energy levels between 9am and 9pm-thus each building has 48 blocks for each 15 minute period in those 12 hours. The shade of the building indicates a subjective measurement of happiness taken at the end of the day, but unfortunately, as I added the block colors in later, the shade of the building alone became quite difficult to see. Each block has a fill color associated with my energy level.
My energy levels don’t seem affected by the number of hours slept or exercised, but I have been a lot better about sleeping and exercising regularly this summer, so I didn’t have a day this week where I slept less than 6 hours or did not exercise, perhaps explaining the lack of effect on energy levels. My energy levels always seem to dip down in the afternoon—no amount of tea seems to awaken me. This has a huge toll on my productivity if I’m being honest so would love to hear if anyone has any suggestions on how to increase energy levels at certain times of day. Reflecting on this data, I seemed to have a lot more low energy blocks on days where I was less happy.
I would like to reiterate that collecting data on oneself is so subjective. The way that we remember data points like happiness and energy level is even more subjective. For instance, what I defined as low or high energy could easily have differed per day, even per moment. How I defined happiness might have been by the peak happiness that day or the most immediate memory of what happened that day. That said, this week definitely made me more mindful of how I was doing mentally & physically.
My energy levels don’t seem affected by the number of hours slept or exercised, but I have been a lot better about sleeping and exercising regularly this summer, so I didn’t have a day this week where I slept less than 6 hours or did not exercise, perhaps explaining the lack of effect on energy levels. My energy levels always seem to dip down in the afternoon—no amount of tea seems to awaken me. This has a huge toll on my productivity if I’m being honest so would love to hear if anyone has any suggestions on how to increase energy levels at certain times of day. Reflecting on this data, I seemed to have a lot more low energy blocks on days where I was less happy.
I would like to reiterate that collecting data on oneself is so subjective. The way that we remember data points like happiness and energy level is even more subjective. For instance, what I defined as low or high energy could easily have differed per day, even per moment. How I defined happiness might have been by the peak happiness that day or the most immediate memory of what happened that day. That said, this week definitely made me more mindful of how I was doing mentally & physically.
